Hermione Granger: A Second Thought
by WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot
Summary: One-shot AU. All things equal in their fifth year, Hermione wonders how Ron would react if she invited a Slytherin girl to join Dumbledore's Army. This is set before my story, Daphne Greengrass and the 6th Year from Hell but can be read alone.


**A/N:** This is a revised one-shot set during OOTP--and I thank JJ Rust for his concrit; in my opinion, the story is better now. This is an AU prequel moment from my story, Daphne Greengrass and the 6th Year From Hell, but can be enjoyed on its own.

All things being equal in _Order of the Phoenix_, Hermione decides to invite a fifth year Slytherin girl that she studies with occasionally to meet at the Hog's Head.

I own nothing, and thanks to stella8h8chang for the very quick beta-work and edits and all. So very helpful you are ;0)

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Hermione Granger: A Second Thought. 

**In the Gryffindor common room, waiting for Ron and Harry before the first Hogsmeade visit in fifth year . . .**

He's going to hate me.

Oh, there's no use in arguing with me about this point.

I know Ron, all right? I know him very, _very _well.

Perhaps I should've prepared him for her, you know? Maybe I should have given him the opportunity to get used to the idea that a Slytherin girl might actually support Harry.

Yes, yes . . . I'll let your gasps of shock and surprise pass before I continue.

So I've known her since third year. It wasn't one of my more _graceful_ years, I'll grant you. I was overworked, exhausted, and mentally fatigued. Not only from my double, almost _triple_, workload from my classes, but from falling out with Ron and Harry.

I can look back at that time now and I know it was one of the worst times of my life. I've always known how important Ron and Harry were to me, right? But, I just didn't know how much I actually _needed_ them in my life. Harry, with his sincerity and all-encompassing heart of gold, and Ron with his . . . err . . . oh goodness!

I'm blushing.

No, no. I know I'm blushing . . . my face feels hot, and my breathing's quickened just a slight amount.

I'm never one to swear, but since I'm doing this all in my head, where there's no one else around . . . _dammit_!

Okay . . . deep breaths . . . and I'm back to my regularly scheduled thoughts.

So, third year . . . yes. I was feeling so alone, so tired of all the bickering with me on one side and Harry and Ron on the other, and so utterly exhausted with going backwards and forwards and actually almost meeting myself both coming and going (_sometimes literally_ . . ._ that should be a warning to_ anyone_ wanting to experiment with Time Turners!_) that I didn't even realize I had fallen asleep in the library while I was studying Arithmancy.

And I _love_ Arithmancy!

I remember. . . .

_THUD_!

"Wha'?" Usually, I'm far more articulate, but when one is woken up from their first restful sleep in days, how else would they react if a sound resembling a troll stampede fell somewhere near their left ear?

I looked up and saw a girl. She was short, and had black hair and somewhat dark-ish skin. And eyes that seemed they _might_ be big and expressive . . . if she didn't glower so much.

"Granger, right?" Her tone was short and terse. My eyes drifted toward the crest on her robe.

Slytherin.

(_Oh. Joy._)

"Umm . . ." I tried smoothing my hair down and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. I barely stifled a yawn. "Yes. I'm _Hermione _Granger."

"Daphne Greengrass. I'm in a few classes with you." I saw her nostrils flare and she crossed her arms, giving her face a rather arrogant look. She would have reminded me of Professor Snape if he were much shorter . . . and a teenager . . . and female.

She didn't speak to me for a few moments.

"Is there something I can help you with, Daphne?" I decided to use her proper first name. Maybe I was trying to break the ice? Maybe I wanted to break through the adversarial air that seemed to surround us . . . even without any words being spoken.

Daphne furrowed her brow, apparently confused by my informality. "Uh . . . um, well . . . I-I just sort of saw you here at the table, and you were snoring—"

"I was _what_?" This horrified me. How loud had I been? What if more people saw me?

Oh, why didn't anyone wake me up?

"Snoring, Gran- . . . er, Her-ermione," Daphne stuttered. "Anyways, look. I know you've missed a couple of classes last week, and now, you're sort of resembling used parchment—"

"What do you mean, 'used parchment'?"

Daphne gestured to my head. "You fell asleep on your essay. There's ink all over your face."

"Oh no!" I started scrubbing frantically at my face, and my heart raced as I looked at my parchment. My essay, a seven-foot dissection on the history and magical properties of the number seven was in such poor condition, I couldn't stop my eyes from watering.

"Oh Merlin, don't cry!" Daphne said frantically. She grasped hold of her hair, and her face registered her utter _shock_, and I couldn't fathom any reason why she'd be so surprised, other than she wasn't expecting me to cry.

Well, to be perfectly honest, I wasn't expecting _m_e to cry either. . . .

I swatted away my tears, sniffed my runny nose a few times, and continued to rub at my face. "Did you want something?" I said to her, in a slightly put-out tone of voice.

"Well, since you were out of class, I wanted to give you some of my notes."

I stopped rubbing my cheek.

"Er, _what_?"

I had never sounded so articulate.

Daphne rolled her eyes, huffed once, and spoke, "I. Wanted. To. Give. You. My. Notes. For the classes we share that you missed."

I stared at her dumbly.

"Well?"

"Why? You've jinxed them didn't you?" I narrowed my eyes at her.

Daphne threw her hands up in the air. "Fine! Don't believe me." She stabbed her finger to my left. I looked down; she was pointing (_violently I would add_) to a small stack of parchments. "They're right there. I'm leaving them with you. I'm studying for the next three hours at _that_ cubicle over to your right. I'll come back out in two," she held up the same number of fingers in a "victory" sign (_or obscene gesture_ . . ._ I'll admit I sort of deserved it_),"hours, regardless if you've decided you can trust that they won't blow up your fingers or anything." With that, she turned sharply around and stomped away.

I rubbed my eyes again, and stared suspiciously at the apparent "notes". Too tired to take full precautions — not to mention sort of in a reckless mood — I brought out my wand and poked at them.

Nothing happened.

My eyes moved between the parchments and the path that Daphne Greengrass just walked. Taking one deep breath, I licked my lips, and pulled the notes toward me, and started reading through them, filling in my gaps for Arithmancy, Defense Against the Dark Arts, and Potions. Well, not so much filling in gaps as supplementing my written notes culled from our textbooks _and _other secondary sources with her near-verbatim notes from our professors. I was actually quite impressed with this girl's ability to transcribe the lectures so vividly; it was almost as if I could actually _hear_ Professors Vector, Lupin, and Snape talking.

When she returned, I thanked her and apologized for my behavior before. She mumbled something intelligible and walked away . . . .

From that moment onward, I'd raise my hand up to greet her in the library and hallways, or I'd shoot her a quick grin in any of our shared classes. She acted like she didn't know what to do at first, but after a couple of weeks, I saw a couple of small smiles on her face and little nods toward my direction. If I was in the library, she'd come up to me and we'd discuss classes and our notes, making sure things were consistent.

In fourth year, after a couple of weeks of classes, I had decided enough was enough, and so I approached her in the library. . . .

I pulled out a chair, plopped myself down into it, dropped my books purposefully onto the table and folded my hands together.

"Daphne," I said, ignoring her open-mouthed expression which I interpreted as shocked indignation, "I must say that I've been very impressed with you in our classes together." My voice was very controlled and steady.

She closed her mouth slightly, but had an expression that seemed much more curious than before. She remained silent, so I kept talking.

"Whenever you've been called on by a teacher, you give thoughtful and accurate answers. And you were really kind to me when you didn't have to be by giving me your lecture notes last year." I sat back and smiled at her.

"So?" she mumbled and shrugged gracelessly.

Refraining from huffing and rolling my eyes at her, I asked her in a steady tone, "Why _did_ you give me your notes that day?"

Daphne mumbled indecipherably.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch that . . ."

"I _said_ . . . Ididdnlikeseeinyasickantiredancryin' . . ." Daphne was still mumbling . . . and _still_ trying my patience.

"Daphne, I still didn't hear—"

"_Dammit_, Granger, I said I didn't like seeing you cry! I didn't like seeing you making yourself sick with your classes and your friends too . . . I-" Daphne started and paused and she fiddled a bit with her quill. "You'd gotten petrified in second year, too. That monster," Daphne said quietly, with a faraway look in her eyes, "that thing in the chamber could've killed you." She looked back at me, and for the first time since coming to Hogwarts, I saw true compassion in a Slytherin's eyes.

It was at that point that I decided not to push her any further.

"Would you like to study with me for some of our classes, Daphne? It's always nice to bounce ideas off of another person. So much the better if that person actually knows a thing or two about the subject matter."

She cocked her eyebrow. "I s'pose so," Daphne mumbled. "But aren't you gonna get your arse kicked if you're seen with me? I mean," she said, gesturing to her Slytherin crest with splayed fingers, "we're sworn enemies within the hallowed halls of Hogwarts."

I couldn't stop myself from smiling just that little bit. "Are you going to let a little thing like house rivalry stop you from getting top marks?" I gave my head a little wriggle in (_smug_) amusement at her smirk. "I know _I_ wouldn't."

"Touché, Granger." Daphne gave me a quick nod.

"Hermione, Daphne. My name is Hermione. I want you to call me by my proper first name." I gave her my "Hermione's dead serious" stare that I usually use on Ron and Harry when I mean business.

Narrowing her eyes so they looked like little dark slits, Daphne said. "Fine. We'll try this for a bit, but if we meet up, let's find a study cubicle where we can work _alone_. I'm not gonna risk a bunch of crap with my house over you."

I blinked, more to hide my eyes, which were threatening to roll back so far into my head, I'd actually be able to see my retinas.

"No problem, Daphne," I said, with a sigh and a small nod, a more firm physical acknowledgement of agreement.

So, yes . . . I, Hermione Jean Granger, had a Slytherin study buddy . . . a _secret _Slytherin study buddy. . . . And I chose not to tell Harry or Ron about her.

That, of course, all changed when Cedric Diggory died.

Cedric's death seemed to be some sort of "line in the sand". It's that image I saw in those old Western movies from America that my dad loves to watch. There was always some scene where the cowboy extended his booted foot and kicked at the ground with his toe, forming a straight indentation in the coarse grains.

"All those _with_ me, over here," he'd say in a thick, coarse, masculine American accent. And the people he'd made the challenge to would then make their choice.

Cedric Diggory — or rather, his death, I should say — made Daphne choose. I saw it in her eyes as she described what she saw that night of the Third Task.

I saw it . . . and I nearly lost it again.

It was the same look, the same "thing" I saw in Ron's eyes that night too. It was the same "thing" I saw in my own eyes when I finally got to a mirror that night.

It's funny, the things that stay with you. . . .

So, here I sit. I wait for my best friends to make their way downstairs so we can have a bit of breakfast and discuss any last-minute details about our plan to stick it to that . . . that utter _toad_ of a teacher.

Harry and Ron have been such a bad influence on me.

And I have to decide whether it would be best to warn Ron about the one extra person that I invited to our meeting . . . or if I should let him make the happy discovery along with everyone else.

Ron really must learn some tolerance. His attitude about house-elves and other non-witch or wizard creatures can do with some fixing. Additionally, he can't just walk around life hating people just because a hat said they belonged in one particular house.

So what if it _is_ the house that You-Know- . . . okay, okay . . . the house that V-volde-mort built.

After all, that same hat was the one that sang, "_And we must unite inside her, or we'll crumble from within_. . . ."

And, considering that we can all feel the start of something terrible, something violent, something _evil_, just outside these castle walls, I cannot help but agree.

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Line from the Sorting Hat from _Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, _US Edition, pg. 207. 


End file.
